11 & 12
<p>The day that will define my generation. Every generation has their "where I was when" events, this was the one that will really stick. I remember the Oklahoma City bombing, but not where I was and what I was doing, or even when it was off the top of my head; I remember the OJ Simpson chase because my dad made a big deal about it and we watched the trial results in class; I even remember a bit of the fall of the Berlin Wall--one of my earliest memories, and my introduction to the existence of a larger world. But for those I was young, still a kid, this was different, I was 18, I was out of school, I was old enough to feel the pain.
 
 
I was laying in bed, trying to sleep in. I had graduated High school a few months earlier, and was taking the fall semester off of school to work--I was working at a movie theater. For the first time I was enjoying sleeping in during September, no school. But this particular day was not to be so pleasant--still far better than many people's days... My mom knocked on my bedroom door, and almost made a joke about SimCity and how airplanes would always crash into buildings, and it just happened in real life. Or maybe that was my first thought for the morning shock of a plane hitting a building, not thinking about how many people just died. Reality set it quickly and I got up to watch the news unfold. 
I sat on the couch in my pajamas and watched in horror as the second plane hit, and as reality truly set in as the third plane, in Pennsylvania, went down, and what was portrayed as a fourth hitting the Pentagon Building (conspiracy says there was no plane, and no concrete evidence supports there having been one..........), I sat hugging myself in tears, as we began to realize the nation was under attack, and we were in for war.
 
 
I had to work that evening at the theater, it was a slow night. The few people that did come in were somber.
 
The next day I had to work again, and it was much busier. People had been watching the news for too long, and needed to get out and unwrap from reality for a bit. I think it was Rat Race that was the most popular movie that night, could have been Jimmy Neutron; Jay and Silent Bob was also playing, along with The Others and Vanilla Sky, and I don't remember if Shallow Hal was at that time or just after--don't feel like looking it up--, but they were not the movies that people needed to see that night.
 
 
 
 
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